The present invention relates to an electronic filing system to which a computer aided design (CAD) system or the like is connected and, more particularly, to a method and a system for registering and filing image data whereby any desired portion of image data generated by the CAD system is electronically filed, searched for and extracted automatically through the use of key-words.
In recent years, the electronic filing system has been the newest arrival on the scene of office automation (OA) following the word processor, personal computer and facsimile machine. This newcomer is capable of storing huge amounts of documents and drawings in the form of image data on disks in their drives. The electronic filing system admits source drawings from a scanner, converts them to electronic image data, and stores page after page of the image data on optical disks or similar means. As required, the system retrieves desired portions of the image data and displays or prints them out.
In searching for any portion of image data, the simplest method would be to display and visually verify the data from the first page on through retrieval from disks. The most serious drawback to this method was the obviously low efficiency of the search, evidenced by the uncertainty of when the desired image data is reached and displayed or otherwise output. A widely deployed prior art solution to this problem has been to add key-words to image data as they are registered, the key-words indicating the contents of the data they are attached to. In operation, the desired portion of the image data is searched for by use of the corresponding key-word. Generally, where the image data involve documents, important words or pieces of wording are picked up therefrom and are assigned and input as key-words to the respective portions of the suitably filed data. Where drawings are included, they are identified by drawing names or other appropriate pieces of wording which are input as key-words indicating the contents of the drawings selected. These key-words may be defined as character key-words as opposed to what is proposed below in this specification.
A distinct drawback to the use of character key-words has been that they may not fully express what each drawing or figures therein graphically represent. Another drawback has been that the character key-words are bothersome and difficult to enter from an input device. So another solution to the problem of searching for graphic elements was proposed. This method, disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 60-83179, involves the use of key-words graphically representing the characteristic of each figure being filed.
The method is embodied in part by an input and a display device, the input device reading source drawings and the display device outputting the data that were read. The contour of each figure is traced manually by a pointing device (mouse, tablet, etc.). The traced figure is reduced in size and used as a key-word. Because the reduced graphic form is generated by extracting the characteristics of the image it represents, it is easy for the operator to distinguish one reduced figure from another. Thanks to the reduction, a large number of key-words may be displayed simultaneously on a key-word display screen of the display device. When any of the reduced graphic forms on display is picked by the pointing device, the corresponding image data is read from the optical disk for display.
The prior art method outlined above allows figures to be defined as key-words. The operator may use desired external form patterns according to his or her liking as key-words. This feature makes it easier to search optical disks of huge capacities for target images.
The above-mentioned prior art method has significantly improved the efficiency in searching for desired image data. However, there has still remained the bothersome task of having to register the key-words, be they graphic or in character.
In generating external form key-words, the operator must trace the contour of each of the figures entered using the pointing device. Thus the task of registering page after page of image data has consumed inordinate amounts of time.
In generating character key-words, the operator must pick up and manually input suitable words or pieces of wording from the images to be registered. In addition, there are often required not one but a plurality of key-words to one figure for clarification purposes. This requirement has further exacerbated the situation where it takes many man-hours to accomplish the image data registration.
Other prior art methods related to this area include ones disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-open Nos. 62-72067 and 62-93757.